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Destiny 2 is out now, and it's flooding all the major gaming news outlets. Every time I open any news app, I'm shocked when the first four stories aren't about Destiny 2. Also, as any sports fan will tell you, the (really, really good) live action Destiny 2 trailer has been unavoidable. It's every other commercial during a football broadcast.

How do they afford this huge marketing campaign? At least part of it is microtransactions, apparently. First, everyone was u in arms over Middle-earth: Shadow of War's  policy that the developers had to release a video explaining what it's in-game purchases do. Now, it's Destiny 2. I heard about all of the nonsense going on with shaders, and I wonder why would anyone use any shader now, given how quickly you'll move on to the next piece of gear. Swapping gear is the main draw of Destiny, so why would they be consumable?

NBA 2K has always flirted with Virtual Currency (VC), but I always found enough by playing Play Now or NBA Today games and then stocking points for a while. Now you need VC basically every aspect of the game. What makes this worse is that the $150 version of NBA 2K18 gives players a massive amount of VC instantly, so I see players with huge stat boosts right at the beginning of MyCareer.

At this point, in-game purchases are unavoidable, but boycotting games or yelling at developers (whose publishers likely decided the business models) isn't going to make them go away.